


Those Things Done For Love

by QuailiTea



Series: A Thread of Gossip [2]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Boats and Ships, F/M, Gossip, MFMM Year of Tropes, Post-Season/Series 03, Reunion Fic, Reunions, Rumors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 13:58:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12212670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuailiTea/pseuds/QuailiTea
Summary: Prudence got him on his way, but Jack is going to have a time of it on this ship full of rich, curious and bored people. He's going to have to find some way to keep his personal business private until he can get off the boat and find out if Miss Fisher will be glad to see him. But what will he find to occupy his time?





	Those Things Done For Love

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it was supposed to be a second chapter. Oops.

Prudence Stanley had an old friend in the RAAF. Of course, Prudence Stanley would have an old friend in the RAAF. And not any old honking goose of an airman, but an honest-to-goodness, chestful of medals, private-line-to-the-brass friend, who, it seemed, had carried a torch for Prudence Stanley at some distant point in the past. And thanks to that friend, Jack was now seated in an astonishingly plush chair on an astonishingly posh ship, watching the coastline of Italy roll by at an astonishingly fast clip. He had not expected, when he’d taken her up on her offer of help following after her niece, to have been quite so forcibly reminded of Miss Fisher’s own breathless pace at life. There had been a train ticket, and then an airplane or three, and suddenly a first-class cabin on a boat he boarded in Bombay, which, while far, far too expensive for a police inspector’s savings, was apparently a dim second place when it came to pleasing Prudence Stanley. And the absolute furor he had created in the passengers!

To be fair, a weather-battered man with brand-new luggage being hustled aboard a luxury cruising liner and into an absurd suite would inspire commentary in most people. And perhaps he was being a little foolish to embrace it. But if there were ever a time in his life that his stage skills would be more useful or a better distraction for himself, Jack doubted he would be able to think of it. It had started that first night at dinner, when he had turned up in the dinner jacket that he distinctly did not remember owning, with his tie lopsided. One of his dining partners, a young lady not much older than Jane, by the name of Clarissa Selverton, had turned to him with a hesitant smile as her parents paraded toward their table.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Robinson, but, er…” she pointed discreetly.

“Thank you Miss Selverton,” he’d replied, adjusting the knot. “I’m not used to doing these up myself.” He had meant, the last time he’d worn a bow tie he could recall, Rosie had been the one doing up the knot. But Miss Selverton had taken it rather differently.

“You’ve brought no man along? But how… I beg your pardon; how impertinent of me.” She tinged pink. And it dawned on him that he was pure enigma to these people. Convention-defying, mysterious and apparently rich – he was… basically, Miss Fisher. A warm crawl of absurd amusement came over him, and he heard himself replying archly, with a Fisherine nonchalance.

“No, no, not at all, Miss Selverton. He was more than content to stay behind with his bride – newlyweds, you know. I’ve been known to manage on my own, and my business is easier if I travel light.” Her brown eyes lit with enthusiasm, and she brushed back a wayward lock of black hair from her tanned forehead.

“Oh, a newlywed with an Indian bride, how fascinating! You must have had some adventures if he was able to fall in love while you were in the middle of… what business did you say you were on?”

“I didn’t,” he said genially, “and I mustn’t. You know how tongues wag.” As her father and stepmother seated themselves in a flutter of feathers and silken fabric, he could see Miss Selverton plotting how to best draw out her curious dinner companion. It had snowballed from there. Clarissa clearly read mystery novels, and had the imagination to go with them. He had spotted her craning her neck to read a telegram from Collins about a fraud case that had come in, and later that afternoon, she’d brought up the subject of false identities from her book.

“They can be interesting,” he’d said, turning pages in his newspaper as she rambled. “The last time I needed an assumed persona, I created an Archibald Jones, but he has a record of breaking and entering now, so I can’t use him anymore.” And he refused to be drawn any further on the subject, leading to a farcical dinner where the murmurings from the table behind him about his purported espionage activities paralyzed one of the waiters with anxiety. Jack bore the lateness of his plate of roast with good grace.

A few days later, he nearly stepped on Clarissa’s young friend Morris as he knelt in front of the lock of his cabin, purportedly tying his button-up shoe. Jack’s only response was an almost wistful: “if you want to try lockpicking, I’d suggest something better than a bent hairpin. Try a clockmaker’s if you want something sturdy, though I’d ask you not test it on my door.” When Morris’s ayah chatted him up the next day in the salon, Jack came away with the distinct impression she thought he might be a burglar, smuggling Burmese rubies in his luggage.

The day they were due to pass into the Red Sea, the gossip was an unseen tsunami. Morris and Clarissa were huddled together by the gangplank, watching him intently, but he had nothing more suggestive planned than a walk to an English-language bookshop. Yet somehow, a few hours later, his innocuous bundle of Zane Grey and P. G. Wodehouse, wrapped in brown paper along with a small watercolor card he’d purchased on impulse from a ragged-looking painter near the bridge, was the subject of intense whispered scrutiny from everyone on the deck. A long moment passed before the Purser, awkwardly, stepped forward and asked Jack if he wouldn’t mind terribly coming to one side? It was just that, so terribly sorry sir, his purchases needed to be inspected? For questionable materials, sir, you understand? Jack kept his features schooled as he passed over his humble little parcel, but internally, he was chuckling. When the little leather-bound volumes yielded nothing more scandalous than a few compressed midges, Clarissa and Morris’s flaming cheeks were like beacons. Jack found himself in conference with Mr. Harlan Selverton in the smoking lounge that night, receiving an apology so abject he wondered if Clarissa might have written the script for him. After a few awkward, stumbling attempts, he had mercy on the man.

“Mr. Selverton, I assure you, I’m not offended.” The man pulled up short at that, his round face pale in the electric lights. “I know Clarissa finds me interesting, and if it amuses her to make up stories about an average Australian police detective, well, it helps pass the time until I get to England.” Selverton let out a long, relieved sigh. He seemed to have decided something.

“I’m so very glad to hear you say it, Detective Robinson. She’s had a truly difficult few years, between the death of her sister and mother and my recent remarriage.” The man scrubbed his face with one sleeve tiredly. “Her mind tears itself to pieces without something to do. I nearly lost her at that school.” His voice hitched and dropped to a near-whisper. “I don’t know what to do with her. My brilliant girl.” Jack felt his own heart wrench in sympathy.

“Mr. Selverton – Harlan,” he began. “If it makes your daughter happy, I can certainly remain a mysterious character for a little while longer.” Selverton looked at him sidelong, clearly uncertain what to make of the offer. Jack continued, swirling his whiskey as a mischievous smile played on his lips. “An enigmatic telegram left at the breakfast table ought to get her at least to Italy, don’t you think?”

That night, Jack crept down to the telegraph office, being careful to let Morris see him furtively sending a few quick questions to Mrs. Stanley. At breakfast the next morning, he left the return message under the table, to be found and ravenously devoured by Clarissa and her friend. It read: _P and Baron arrived safely only four days ago due to SE Asia hurricane STOP Unaware your pursuit STOP Cost no concern STOP PStanley._ The pair of teenagers pored over an atlas in the library for four solid days, matching shipping registers against weather reports and navigational charts, trying to work out what ship or what cargo the mysterious Mr. Stanley could be so eager to chase down. Jack ensconced himself in a plush chair and perused pamphlets on diamond mines. When they started to lose steam, Jack casually mentioned to Mr. Selverton that he was wondering whether the noise about a new record-setting airplane flight over the Indian Ocean had any truth to it. He tucked into his cream of asparagus soup and pretended not to notice Clarissa’s gasp of excitement. A few days after that, his room steward mentioned that that nice young Miss Selverton seemed to be a budding aviatrix, based on her fascination with the zeppelin they’d spotted that afternoon. It was a strange game, but it passed the time, and kept him from second-guessing himself for too many hours of the day. And as for the nights, well, for as many times as his nerves quailed, he was glad someone else was doing the navigation.

When they sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar, he went out on deck to watch the coastline for the Pillar of Hercules and think in abstract terms about Roman monuments and single pillars of the world. He could feel curious eyes on the back of his head as he turned his fedora in his hands, but the sunset was only just buttering the sky with a welcoming glow, and the Atlantic chill was preferable to the grating clatter of amusements inside. Scarlet, rose and tangerine bands appeared at the dark edges of the horizon, putting him mind of the dark hair he was hurtling toward, the crimson smile that had dragged him halfway around the world. He was aware of Clarissa leaning against the railing next to him, but neither of them spoke for several long, shivery minutes. She broke the silence first.

“Are you making fun of me, Mr. Robinson?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you making fun of me?” She stared resolutely at the ocean, her eyes watery with emotion or wind, he couldn’t quite tell. “All this business with your telegram and mysterious errands and you being so nonchalant and I always think you’re laughing at me, even though you never seem to laugh at all…” she broke off and dropped her head with a whisper. “I knew it was too good to be real. A real mystery.”

“Let me give you a piece of advice?” Jack paused, the light growing dimmer by the moment, and stars beginning to wink in and out of view as the November clouds skidded by. “You have the makings of a fine detective, Miss Selverton. You have curiosity, perseverance and drive, which will get you into and out of all the trouble you could want.” She watched him intently, but his eyes were faraway and soft, as if he were speaking to someone a long way off. “And I hope you don’t let anyone else convince you differently.”

“That’s your advice? Get into trouble?”

“No,” he said, and for the first time, he faced her fully, and a smile lit his face in a way that made her breath hiccup for a very long moment. “My advice is, listen for what things move you. And then, then, when you find that something that moves you, move. It will get you into trouble, but you will never regret it.” He walked slowly away, leaving her grappling with a cascade of new feelings that left her wondering if the sky had always been quite so open. If the air had ever felt quite as able to lift her into flight. Just before he ducked back into the doorway though, he called back over his shoulder.

“And Miss Selverton?” She jerked around, a little breathless. “The airplane was the right guess. But it’s only a two-seater I’m chasing.”

\---

Southampton was freezing. It was November, it was misting more than a little, and it meant all sorts of uncomfortable memories that Clarissa didn’t want to think about. So instead, as the boat tied up at the dock and everyone collected their luggage, Clarissa watched. She watched as the still-mysterious Mr. Robinson disembarked. It had been an awkward last leg of the voyage for her, but he had drawn further into abstraction once they passed Bordeaux. Morris’s father had stated with implacable authority that it was because Robinson was actually a wine dealer with interests in France, but Clarissa had listened more carefully this time. It sounded to her like Morris’s father was the one who wanted to be a vineyard owner. Robinson was walking slowly, scanning the docks for his luggage. Clarissa did the same, looking for the battered army bag stacked on top of the brand-new trunk that had so intrigued her when he had first boarded. As she looked, her attention was drawn by a woman standing at the edge of the greeting crowd. She was dressed in a hibiscus-red coat with black toggles, a patterned scarf, and a cloche hat with a violet band and jaunty black and white ostrich plumes. Amidst the heavily bundled-up crowd, she looked like the last defiant maple in a sea of bare-branched oaks, or a ringneck parrot in a flock of thrushes. When he saw her, Clarissa knew instantly this was the woman he had been thinking of at Gibraltar when he smiled that rare, enchanting smile. Her heart broke (only a little) when he barged down the gangway, swept up to the woman in red, and kissed her with a ferocity that was almost scandalous. The hat was knocked loose, and Clarissa caught a glimpse of a fashionable black bob, violet earrings, and brilliantly mischievous eyes before her face was buried in his again. Next to her, Morris gave a bark of laughter. “Told you it was a lady he was after,” he said smugly. “Solid bloke like that wouldn’t have left his home for nothing less.”

“Shut it, Pigeon,” she said, with no real heat. “You wouldn’t know the first thing about love. And I still say my theory that he was an Indian agent smuggling jewels was plausible.” Bickering amiably, Clarissa let Morris convince her to come back inside.

On the docks, Margaret Fisher watched her daughter with a maelstrom of emotions whirling in her head. There had been bickering, arguing, conniving, outright lying, and an impossible-to-conceal number of telegrams from Australia, but she and Pru had done it. They had actually managed to keep Phryne in England just long enough to get her policeman to her. Her daughter had brought Henry back to her, for all of both their faults, and Margaret Pennington Fisher was going to have them under her roof for Christmas. And if some strange detective with a waterlogged coat and a very poor sense of propriety (hands out of there, good sir!) was the price she was to pay to do it, so be it. Margaret made shorthand notes for her sister while Phryne continued making a spectacle of herself in front of God and all Creation. She even seemed to have tears collecting in her eyes as she took the man by the lapels and dragged him towards the car, a helpful porter following behind, eyes front and ears a fine shade of red. Pru always did have the most particular sense of taste; her sister was going to combust in a speechless, screeching fury when she got this letter.

Aunt P did no such thing.


End file.
